No Federal Funding for Standards Board

In overlooking the private-sector model, the partisans of teacher
advancement are neglecting the key to professional autonomy.Money," runs
the Slavic proverb, "will make iron float." And indeed, it is a
substantial sum of federal money that is being sought to float the
research and development activities of the recently established
National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.

Currently weighing in with 64 members, this body is the offspring of
the 1986 report of the Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy, A
Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21st Century; its chairman is the
former Governor of North Carolina, James B. Hunt Jr. While the Carnegie
Corporation of New York agreed to provide $1 million a year for five
years to launch the board and its work, a high priority on the
organization's agenda has been to secure federal funding for at least
half the research that it envisions.

But the nature and purposes of the standards board do not warrant
the appropriation of government dollars. The planning and financing of
projects aimed at empowering teachers should remain the responsibility
of the teaching profession itself.

A vehicle for obtaining federal funding--entitled "the National
Board for Professional Teaching Standards act of 1988"--rolled into the
Senate in early August. Introduced by Senator Christopher J. Dodd,
Democrat of Connecticut, and cosponsored by five of his colleagues from
the Labor and Human Resources Committee, this bill would have provided
$25 million over a three-year period "to pay the federal share" of the
costs of "activities directly related to the development of teacher
assessment and certification procedures."

Although the bill was shelved before the adjournment of the 100th
Congress, its backers plan to introduce similar legislation when the
next Congress convenes in January.

It is indeed an interesting calculation to prorate the federal
"share" of the costs for activities of private individuals--in this
case, teachers. One may argue that teaching is a profession with a
peculiarly public application--but then nearly all professions are
practiced in or on the public.

And though the nation's schools--the vast majority of which are
tax-supported--are more and more being cast in the role of a national
public utility and the teaching profession is for the most part a
closely regulated public-sector entity, teachers as a group do not have
unlimited claim on the public purse.

If teachers set the precedent of having the federal government
underwrite a totally undefined research project to establish standards
for sorting out the elite members of their numerous ranks, why should
not other vocations line up for the same benefit?

The supporters of federal funding for the board fail to establish a
reasonable--or constitutional--claim to such special treatment. The
proposed legislation identifies as its goal "the development and
promulgation of voluntary standards of professional certification ...
that complement and support state licensing practices." Its proponents
argue that they are trying to provide "incentives to enhance the
professionalism and status of teaching."

And to justify this essay in philanthropy, they offer the rationale
that "the economic well-being and national security of the United
States depend on efforts to strengthen the educational system," and
that "improved teaching is central to the goal of ensuring a
well-educated workforce."

Under a rubric as wide as that, almost any initiative in education
would be eligible for federal funding.

Beyond considerations of constitutionality and economics is the
question of whether such a "Manhattan project" type of approach will
succeed in advancing the professional status of teachers. It may, in
fact, just as easily retard this movement.

While the teaching profession may gain certain short-term benefits
by having politicians assume the role of patrons, surely teachers are
capable on their own of establishing and codifying standards of
excellence.

It would far better suit the enhanced image they presumably seek and
help earn them the parity with other professions that has long eluded
them if teachers took charge and themselves established procedures--as
physicians and lawyers and architects have done--to rate their
colleagues' qualifications and expertise.

And the standards to be devised by the board would be voluntary;
they would not supplant the existing licensing procedures overseen by
the states that serve as the basic quality-control strategy for
assessing teacher competence.

An optional program is ipso facto discretionary for the teachers who
would apply. Those who obtain board certification would presumably
acquire greater prestige and income--as do, other things being equal,
physicians who successfully pass specialty-board examinations.

Medical specialty boards are financed by fees charged to those
physicians who apply for certification and membership. Such specialty
boards are, for the most part, small, frugal, and efficient operations,
and the public has confidence in what they do.

In overlooking the private-sector model, the partisans of teacher
advancement are neglecting the very key to professional autonomy and
maturity.

As the promising movements toward school- and classroom-based
management so powerfully show, teachers are more than capable of rising
to the task at hand. The empowerment of their profession is a task the
Congress can safely leave in their hands.

Alan Heslop is professor of state and local government at Claremont
McKenna College and chairman of the National Council on Educational
Research and Improvement.

Vol. 08, Issue 09, Page 28

Published in Print: November 2, 1988, as No Federal Funding for Standards Board

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